


I'll Follow You

by mindfluff



Series: Keep me in your heart [2]
Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Assisted Suicide, Character Death, Lung Cancer, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-01-06 10:46:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18386876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindfluff/pseuds/mindfluff
Summary: Takes place nearly ten years after Vigil. Nick and Kelly are the only two members of Sidewinder left.





	1. I will follow you.

Kelly eased the old Subaru as far down the dirt road as he could before parking.  It probably was well past the area people were allowed to park their cars to hike the trail, but they were eighty-fucking-nine years old and didn’t plan on coming back. Let the cops give him a ticket, he didn’t give a shit.  The hike was going to take long enough, and there was no sense in adding to the distance he and Nick had to traverse. 

He turned the car off and dropped the keys in the cup holder in the center console.  He and Nick sat there for a few minutes in silence, the only noise the ticking of the cooling engine. 

“You ready babe?” Nick asked from the passenger seat.

“Yeah,” Kelly answered.  “You don’t have to…”

“Shut up,” Nick interrupted.  “We’ve been over this, and I’m not going over it again.  You change your mind, that’s fine, but I’m going when you do.”

Kelly reached his hand across the console and gently patted Nick’s leg without saying a word.  He twisted around and grabbed the backpack from the back seat and carefully dropped it on Nick’s lap before opening the car door. 

By the time he got around to Nick’s side of the car, he was out of breath and exhausted.  Again.  The worst part of the whole cancer thing was the exhaustion, or maybe the pain, or maybe the coughing.  Actually the whole thing just sucked moose balls.  Kelly snorted a laugh as Nick opened the door and handed him his oxygen and one of the folding chair canes so he could sit. 

While Kelly fussed with his machine, Nick swung his legs out and leaned on his own cane, working up the will to leverage himself out of the car.

Kelly looked at Nick sitting sideways in the passenger seat and then down at his own wrinkled hands holding the oxygen concentrator and started to giggle.

“Damn Irish, we got fucking old,” he said before he was stopped by a coughing fit. 

“Happened too damn fast,” Nick agreed once Kelly stopped coughing. He felt around in the backpack and came up with his pain pills and a bottle of water.  After swallowing a pill and drinking half the bottle, he leveraged himself out of the car.  Once upright, he stood, leaning heavily on his cane until he was sure his ruined knees would support him. 

Once he’d moved away from the car, Kelly closed the door and patted the roof in a fond farewell.  Nick hitched the backpack over his shoulders, Kelly handed Nick the other cane, situated the bag with his oxygen machine hanging from his shoulder and they started down the dirt path. 

The clear August evening was cooler than usual but still warm and the moderately traveled trail they were walking was an easy one.  It was easily accessible from a dead end street in the nearby development, and had a good place to lay out on a blanket about a quarter of a mile down the path.  It might take them all night to get there, but it didn’t matter.  They had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.

The two men started down the trail in silence, comfortable with each other in the way they had been nearly since their first meeting.  The sixty plus years between then and now only made that quiet companionship easier.

They crossed paths with a hiker returning back to her car, a couple of joggers who nodded at them as they ran past, and a man with a dog who had obviously come from the nearby development.  He’d come across them while they had stopped for Kelly to catch his breath and wait for some of the fatigue to pass.  Kelly promptly sat down on the ground, because his fucking joints still worked, and let the man’s puppy crawl all over him while Nick convinced the guy they were fine and were getting ready to head back to the car anyway.  They were just going to sit and wait for the stars to come out first, maybe catch the meteor shower.  Eventually Kelly gave the puppy a pat on the head and let the guy drag her away towards home.

After he’d gotten out of sight they moved on, Nick using both canes to walk, and Kelly borrowing one to sit on and rest during their frequent stops.  Nick wasn’t sure how long it took for them to make it to their destination; neither of them were keeping track of the time since it didn’t really matter anyway.

The sun had completely set a while ago, but the full moon was in a couple of days so there was enough light for them to see where they were going.  When they finally reached the spot Nick had selected, the moon was starting to go down behind the mountain and Kelly was completely exhausted.  The only thing that had kept him going was the knowledge that he wouldn’t have to walk back, and that Nick had a reason for making them walk this far.

They sat down on the little chairs and Kelly watched as Nick unzipped the backpack and started pulling things out.  Nick pulled out an old green blanket from their days in Jacksonville, a small bottle of orange Gatorade, then Kelly’s medication and finally a sealed envelope with DNR written on it in black Sharpie.  Kelly found himself dozing and gave his cheeks a couple of sharp slaps to wake himself up.

“You want me to spread the blanket out?” he asked.

“Whenever you want, babe,” Nick answered.  “Once I get down I’m not getting back up.”

Kelly snorted, “Yeah, that’s kind of the plan Nicko.”

Nick chuckled.  “You know what I mean.”

They snickered for a few minutes, until Kelly started coughing again.  Nick dug back into the nearly empty backpack and came up with a bottle of water that he handed to Kelly.  He knew it wouldn’t really make a difference, but it made him feel like he was helping anyway.  It took a few minutes before the coughing fit finally subsided and Kelly leaned back on the flimsy chair, exhausted.

“Fuck, I hate that,” he said quietly.  “They said it’d only get worse.”

“Yeah,” Nick said, his voice thick, “fucking sucks babe.”

“Gimme a minute and I’ll lay out the blanket.”

“Take your time.”

For a few minutes the only noise was the gentle hum of Kelly’s oxygen machine, and then the crickets and other nocturnal insects started singing.  They sat there quietly listening to the music of the night for uncounted minutes before Kelly stood up and started spreading the blanket out.

When he was done, he took the backpack from Nick and laid it on one side at the head, and put the Gatorade and his medicine beside it.  Then he helped Nick stand up and move to the blanket, before gently lowering him down.  They’d done this every night for years when they went to bed; Nick leaving his walker or his canes out of the way, and Kelly helping him take the few steps to the bed before gently lowering him down.  The blanket was obviously lower than a bed would be, but Kelly hadn’t lost enough muscle mass yet to make the process impossible.

With Nick down on the ground, Kelly turned off the oxygen machine and set it on the seat of one of the little folding canes.  The other cane was wedged between the oxygen machine and the back of the chair, so it wouldn’t slip.  He briefly toyed with the idea of throwing it all as far as he could, but ultimately decided it would be a waste of energy and this way maybe someone else would be able to use them. 

Once everything they didn’t need was set, he laid down on the blanket next to Nick.  Nick was using the backpack as a pillow and Kelly laid down next to him, half on top of him, his head on Nick’s shoulder, and pulled the other half of the blanket over the both of them. 

He felt Nick fumbling around and pretty soon there was a cloud of smoke drifting up to the stars.  Nick handed the vaporizer pen to Kelly and he took it, breathing the vapor as deeply as he dared.  Nick had it loaded with the medical grade marijuana they were both entitled to and it didn’t take long for him to feel the mellow buzz.

After Nick they’d passed it back and forth a few times, Kelly had a terrible thought.  “Dude, this isn’t going to mess with either of our meds, is it?”

“Nah,” Nick answered.  “I checked with Deuce when I asked for mine.”

“Cool,” Kelly replied.  The other good thing about the pot was that it deadened his need to cough too, and he felt as good as he’d ever got these days.  They were also smoking a lot more than they usually did and he figured that had something to do with it too.

“Do you know what he gave you?” Kelly asked, the curiosity clear in his voice.

“Nope; didn’t ask and didn’t look that close either,” Nick answered.  “He called it in to the pharmacy and told me to crush all of the pills up and dissolve it in something to drink.”

“He gonna get in trouble?”

Nick huffed a laugh.  “I asked him the same thing.  He said worst case scenario is that they take his license away, which at this point isn’t a big deal.  He’s only got three patients, well two now, and he can always get someone else to write their meds until they kick it.”

Kelly chuckled and relaxed into Nick’s warm embrace.

They lay there for a few minutes in silence again, until Kelly’s mind got restless.

“You regret anything Irish?” Kelly asked quietly.

Nick snorted. “I regret a lot of things.  I regret not shooting that kid before he blew up me and Ty. I regret shooting that other kid before he shot us. I regret pretending to forget I asked you to marry me. I regret waiting to tell you guys I was bi.  I regret kissing Ty the night he came out to us. I regret taking the _Fiddler_ when we went with Emma. I regret waiting so long to let you get a boat cat.

Nick turned his head and looked Kelly in the eye.  “Yeah, there’s a lot of things I regret, but I don’t feel guilty about any of it any more.  I’m too old to have anything left on my conscience.”

Kelly stared at him, lost in the depths of Nick’s eyes.  He thought if it had been bright enough to see, they’d be a pale green now from the pain, but starting to get darker as the high kicked in and the pain faded.  Not went away; Nick said the pain never went away anymore, but it did dial back to something manageable.

Eventually Nick looked back up at the stars and Kelly realized he hadn’t said anything.  “How’s your conscious with this?” he blurted. “The Catholic in you going to be ok?”

Nick turned his face back to Kelly, a crooked smile on his lips. “A little late to be asking that, isn’t it?”

Kelly shrugged in response starting to feel guilty himself.  He didn’t want Nick to do anything he wasn’t comfortable with, and while they had discussed their plans, Kelly had completely neglected to consider Nick’s Catholic upbringing.

Nick chuckled quietly.  “The church has been wrong about a lot of stuff.  I’ve made my peace with a lot of things they don’t like; this is one of them.  There’s nothing the doctors can do to fix me Kels, I’m always going to be in pain, and without you there….well, there’s no point anyway.”

 Kelly nodded, content that Nick wasn’t going through with this out of some misplaced sense of loyalty and turned to face the stars.

They passed the pen back and forth a few more times before Nick started chuckling and jostled Kelly’s head on his shoulder. Kelly looked at him and raised his eyebrows.

“Just, laying out here, with you, stoned off our asses, its funny,” he explained, tucking the pen in his shirt pocket.

Kelly grunted in question.

“You know, like the bible thumpers say, ‘a man who lays with another man shall be stoned.’  Kind of gets a whole new meaning.”

Kelly giggled, and smothered a cough.  “In that case, we should’ve been stoned every time we got laid.”

They giggled at that for a while before settling, both of them on their backs, enjoying the crisp mountain air. The meteor shower was in full swing, and the blazing streaks were nearly constant in the dark sky.  Nick thought it was a fitting end for them; since they weren’t going out in a blaze of glory, they’d watch one instead.

Kelly felt himself drifting off, and forced himself awake.  The last thing he wanted was the two of them falling asleep out here and some early morning jogger finding them asleep and having to walk all the way back to the car. 

“Everything’s ready?” he asked quietly.

He felt Nick nod his head before he started going through their list.

“I gave the _Fiddler II_ to Pat Jr last month before we came out here, we burned the rest of your stuff this morning before we closed on the cabin.  The title for the Soob is in the glove box, and this envelope has the instructions for its next road trip as well as copies of our wills and the DNR orders.”

He turned his head and gave Kelly a quick kiss.  “We’re as ready as we’re ever gonna be Doc.”

“Kiss me like you mean it Irish, and then give me the bottle,” Kelly demanded.

Nick shifted to get them both more comfortable, the turned his head towards Kelly and kissed him deeply.  Nick poured everything he felt into the kiss, wordlessly telling Kelly how much he loved him, even after all these years.  He could feel Kelly returning the sentiment and for once he was kind of glad the meds deadened all of his senses.  He really didn’t want to be found out here covered in dried jizz.

When they finally broke apart, both Nick and Kelly were breathing hard.  Nick rested his forehead against Kelly’s and gave him another quick kiss before reaching for the smaller bottle and handing it to Kelly.  Then he grabbed his own bottle of Gatorade and handed it to Kelly as well, so he could take the cap off for him.

Once both bottles were open, Nick tapped his to Kelly’s in a silent toast, and they both drank them down.  When they finished, Kelly tucked both bottles under the backpack and cuddled back into Nick’s shoulder. 

“Tell me about the stars Irish,” he said.  He had always loved hearing Nick talk about the stars.  They’d told him the meds would act quickly, and he could already feel himself getting sleepy.  All he wanted now was Nick’s voice to talk him to sleep one last time.

“Well, the meteors we’re watching are called the Perseids, and are from the tail of Swift-Tuttle comet.”  When Kelly grunted in acknowledgement, Nick raised the arm not tucked around Kelly and pointed at the sky. “The stars over there that look kind of like a W are Cassiopeia.  She bragged that she was more beautiful than the gods so they asked Poseiden to punish her for her insolence, and he sent a monster from the deep after her daughter, Andromeda. Beneath Cassiopeia is Perseus, who was riding his Pegasus, which is those stars, along the beach and saved Andromeda from the monster.  In honor of his bravery, the gods elevated him to the heavens.”

About halfway through, Nick felt Kelly’s body relax and his breath even out as he fell asleep.  Nick turned and kissed the top of his head, checked the pre-programmed text was scheduled on his phone, then closed his eyes and waited for sleep to take him too.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deuce was already awake when the phone rang showing Manitou Police on the caller ID.  He was grateful Nick had given him the head’s up the day before so the call wasn’t exactly a surprise.  He and Nick had spoken at length about his and Kelly’s plan, and had written a prescription for enough sedatives to kill him.  He had also reluctantly agreed to Nick’s listing him as their emergency contact.

Nick’s argument had that his sisters wouldn’t agree with his decision, and would try to prevent him from following through, and he didn’t want to subject his nieces and nephews to having to lie to their parents. 

As he answered the phone, he only hoped he wouldn’t have to physically go ID their bodies; he really didn’t feel like flying to Colorado.


	2. Into the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Accal1a](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accal1a/) for betaing, and sorry ~~not sorry~~ for making you cry :)

When Nick came back to awareness, the first thing he was conscious of was that nothing hurt.  He couldn’t remember the last time his body hadn’t been in pain.  He sat up quickly, looking around in a panic.  All he could see was the clearing by the trail he and Kelly had fallen asleep by, the sun blazing overhead, and the mountain in front of him a verdant green.  He stood up slowly, in a way he hadn’t been able to in years, testing his knees slowly before trusting they might actually be able to hold him.  As he stood, he caught sight of his hand and stared at it.  He held both hands out in front of his face, staring – they no longer trembled or showed the gnarled fingers that ached with arthritis, skin wrinkled and translucent with age and dotted with age spots.

He heard a noise behind him and whirled, crouching into a defensive posture, muscles reacting from decades old memories he couldn’t consciously recall.

“Nicko!  You made it!” Kelly called, barreling down the path towards him.  “Oh thank fuck.”

Nick stared at him, drinking in the sight of his husband, running straight for him, without a care in the world, and looking like he had when they’d actually started dating.  He was so wrapped up in the vision of a younger and healthy Kelly that he completely forgot about the man’s penchant for tackle-hugging and neglected to brace for impact.

They both went down to the ground, Kelly laughing and Nick letting out a loud woof of air as his back hit the ground.  It didn’t hurt though, and again, Nick marveled about the lack of pain in his life.

Kelly grabbed Nick’s face in his hands and kissed him soundly, ignoring the fact they were laying in the dirt.  Nick held Kelly tightly as the kiss turned filthy and felt the hard press of Kelly’s cock against his own as the smaller man straddled him.  Nick involuntarily bucked his hips up into Kelly, and they both moaned at the friction.  Nick grabbed Kelly’s ass in both hands but was startled by a voice calling from down below.

“Yo Rico, Doc!” the voice called again, clearer this time now they were paying attention.

“Eli?” Nick whispered.

Kelly stared at Nick, tears forming in his eyes.  “That was Eli,” Kelly said.  “Holy shit that was Eli.  Is the whole team here?”

Nick grabbed Kelly’s hand and tugged on it as he started moving.  “C’mon, let’s go find out.”

They scrambled down the side of the hill, completely ignoring the path, half sliding, half running in their haste to see if any more of the team was with Eli.

When they hit the bottom of the trail, Eli stood there leaning against the beat up Jeep Kelly had purchased when he was building his cabin.  “Hola amigos,” he said with a huge grin.  “Been a long time, yeah?”

“Eli,” Nick choked out, stopping just short of him.

“Rico,” Eli replied gently before wrapping him up in a bear hug.  Nick held on tightly, and felt Kelly’s arms wrap around the both of them as well.

They stood there for a few minutes, basking in the feel of each other, tears falling freely, reveling in the companionship of a long-lost brother.

Eventually they broke apart, and Eli tossed Kelly the keys. “Let’s go find the others, Doc.”

“You know where they are?” Kelly asked, climbing into the driver’s seat.  He settled himself into the seat, ran his hands over the steering wheel and gave the dashboard a little pat.

“Just pick a direction and drive,” Eli’s muffled voice answered as he clambered into the backseat, as graceless as ever.

There was some more thumping from the back even as Nick climbed in the passenger seat and Eli’s face suddenly appeared in the gap between the two front seats.

“This place don’t follow normal rules,” he continued as Kelly started the Jeep. “Whatever you want just kind of happens as long as you help it along.”

“What?” Nick asked, turning so he could see Eli.  He hadn’t seen the man in over sixty years, and he didn’t want to take his eyes off him in case this was some drug or death fueled hallucination. 

“Yeah man, its cool,” he said, excitement evident in his voice. “You want to see someone you know who’s dead, you just gotta start walking, or driving if you want, and after a little bit, you’ll get to where they are.  Don’t matter how far they are from where you are.  Like, we’re in Colorado now, but pretty soon we’ll be pulling up in front of that bookstore Ty’s got with his dude, or up to his momma’s house.  Depends on where he’s at.” 

“You met Zane?” Kelly blurted.

“Yeah man, that dude is perfect for Six,” Eli laughed.  “Keeps him in line.”

“So this is all real,” Nick muttered to himself. “Eli wouldn’t know Zane if it was just in my head.”

“Hey papi, even if it’s in your head, why does that mean it isn’t real?” Eli asked with a smirk.

 “Fucking Harry Potter man,” Nick said, grinning.  “Can’t believe you made me read that shit.”

“Can’t believe you remember that shit,” Eli shot back.  “Ty told me I’d been dead for sixty years or so when he got here.”

“Yeah,” Nick answered.  “How bad was he when you first saw him?”

Eli shook his head fondly, “He was a wreck, thought I’d blame him or some shit.  Found him at his momma’s sitting there with his husband like it was nothing.  Took me a while to get over Six settling down with anyone, had no clue he was into dudes. He was better at hiding it than you were.”

Kelly smirked, “So he bring you up to speed on what you missed?”

“I know you two are dirty little bunnies if that’s what you’re asking,” he retorted.  “But I fucking knew that when you finally went on that road trip.”

Kelly reached blindly between the seats and started swatting at Eli.  “I fucking knew you were being a creeper.  You gotta teach me how to do that.”

Eli laughed raucously as they came down out of the mountains to find themselves in the outskirts of Baltimore, the road to themselves in a way it never would have been when they were alive.

Eli pointed out the windshield between Nick and Kelly and said excitedly “See, Baltimore! Cool right?”

“How the fuck does that work?” Nick muttered.

“I don’t fucking know man,” Eli answered.  “Its kind of like that Star Trek movie, that one where Kirk is in some paradise and Picard has to get him out.  ‘Cept there’s nothing wrong, and nowhere to get out to.  It’s not a head game; you just want something, and it’ll show up.”

“I want pancakes with M&M’s,” Kelly said.  “I haven’t been able to stomach chocolate in forever.”

Eli shrugged.  “The stuff to make them will be in Ty’s kitchen, guaranteed.”

Kelly shot Nick a hopeful look.

“Yeah, I’ll make you some damn pancakes, Kels,” he said with a fond smile.

Kelly parked the Jeep in front of the bookstore and Ty came barreling out before they’d even gotten the doors shut.

“Irish! Doc! You made it!” he cried, coming down off the stoop and grabbing both of them in a hug. The three of them stood there wrapped around each other while Eli tried not to fall out of the Jeep until Kelly broke away and started pulling Nick towards the door. 

“Someone promised me pancakes,” he explained heading up the stairs into the house, “so there’d better be pancake stuff in the kitchen.”

Ty laughed and led the troupe into the kitchen, where Nick found pancake mix in the cupboard, a bag of mini M&M’s in the pantry and bacon in the fridge.  Nick started a pot of coffee and turned on the burner to boil water for tea before he started mixing the batter, moving around the kitchen with an ease he hadn’t been capable of in decades.  Ty, Eli and Kelly sat at the island, staying out of his way, yet still close for when the food was ready, Kelly regaling them with stories of tubing down the Delaware shortly after Ty’s funeral.

“Where’s Garrett?” Nick asked, once he’d gotten the food started.

“Eh, he’s down at the bookshop,” Ty answered.  “I texted him, so he should be up here in a little bit.”

Nick turned around and looked at the other men. “How’s that work? I mean, you don’t need the money, and do other people you don’t know come in?”

Ty smiled and shook his head.  “Don’t think about it.  Seriously.  Zane literally gave himself a couple of migraines trying to figure it out.  It’s the only time any of us have ever been in any real pain.  Eventually he learned to not think about it too hard.”

“Ty, you’re Spec Ops,” Nick said uneasily, “this doesn’t sound fishy to you?  Just don’t think about it?”

Kelly was watching the other two men at the island, now just as wary as Nick was.  Eli patted his shoulder and gave him a sad smile as Ty and Nick continued.

“Nick, we’re not Spec Ops, we’re dead,” Ty said firmly.  “I know that for a fact.  There’s nothing to figure out, there’s nobody out to get us.  We’re just…whatever we want, living our best death.”

Eli snorted at the phrasing and Ty winked at him with a cheeky smirk.  Nick stared at the two of them, obviously still not believing them.  He looked at Kelly who gave him a minute shrug, and then turned back to the stove willing to let it drop for now. The four of them bantered back and forth while Nick cooked, and once the tray was full of pancakes and bacon, he set it down in front of the other three men. 

Kelly snatched a pancake off the top of the stack and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth, groaning obscenely as he chewed. 

“I haven’t had M&M pancakes in forever,” Kelly said, grabbing another. “These are so fucking good.”

Nick smacked his hand and slid plates in front of all of them.  “You don’t need to eat them like an animal babe,” he said with a smile.

Kelly looked contrite and slid half the pile on his plate and started drowning them in syrup.  Ty and Eli grinned even as they stacked pancakes on their own plates and started digging in.  Nick sipped his tea, content, while the other men started eating.  They hadn’t even made a dent in the food when Nick heard Zane come in the door from the steps.

“Honey, I’m home,” he called heading for the kitchen.

“Fuck,” Ty said around a mouthful of pancakes. “If you’d’ve take a little longer, we could’ve finished these first.  Now we gotta share.”

Zane laughed and pulled up a stool as Nick set a full plate in front of him.  “I set some aside for you in case the animals finished them all.  How’s it been Garrett?”

“Everything’s great now y’all are here,” he said around a mouthful of  food.  “I won’t have to listen to Ty bitch about missing you guys anymore.  Oh holy shit, these are good.  How the hell do you do that, my pancakes don’t turn out like this and we use the same mix.”

Nick shrugged and gave an enigmatic smile before drinking his tea.  He reveled in the comfortable presence of friends he hadn’t seen in years.  When everyone had finished eating and were just drinking the rest of the coffee, Zane finally spoke up.

“So, how’d you guys die that you ended up here together?” he asked.  “Time moves different, but I know I had to wait for Ty and we were what, two years apart?”

Ty nodded in agreement as Nick looked at Kelly and arched a brow.

“Weeeelllll,” Kelly started slowly.  “Technically, I guess you could say mine was cancer?”

“What do you mean technically,” Ty asked, confused.

 “I had lung cancer, the kind that moves really quick and that you die from anyway, so I opted not to do the whole chemo thing,” Kelly said quickly.  “I mean, I’m fucking 89 years old, what’s chemo gonna do, give me another year and be miserable the whole time?  Fuck that shit.”  Kelly looked down at his coffee cup and spun it around in his hands.  “So I went out on my own terms.  Death with dignity and all that.”

The team sat there in stunned silence for a few seconds until Zane spoke up.

“Good for you,” he said with no hint of censure in his voice.  “I’ve always thought that made sense.  I mean, we put animals down when they have no quality of life, why can’t rational people make the same choice?”

There were murmurs of ascent from the rest of the guys and Kelly relaxed, not even realizing he had been tense.

“What about you, Nick?” Zane continued.

“Same,” he replied shortly. He stood up and collected the dishes, taking them over to the sink and running water to wash them with.

“You had cancer too?” Ty asked, head tilted to the side like did whenever he was trying to puzzle something out. 

“Not exactly.”

“Irish, what did you do?” Ty said, his voice rough with emotion.

“Same thing Kelly did,” he answered, “went out on my own terms.”

“But you weren’t dying?” Zane asked.

Nick gave a short bark of laughter and braced his hands on the counter, head bowed, back still to his friends.  “Dude, I was 90.  I could barely walk, taking more meds than you can believe, and I was still in a lot of pain all the time.  Kelly was dying …” Nick choked up at the thought of Kelly dying without him and he had to stop.  After a few long seconds, he cleared his throat and continued.  “I couldn’t do anything without help so after he died, I’d have no choice but to go to a nursing home and wait, in constant pain, to die.  If I was fine, I could have waited.  It would have sucked, and I’d have been miserable, but how much longer was I going to live anyway?  But the way I was? No fucking thanks.”

He shrugged and started washing the dishes again.  “So, I called Deuce.”  He heard a stool move and assumed Ty had moved, but someone, Kelly probably, kept him from reacting.  “I’d been seeing him anyway since Digger died, and when I explained what I wanted and _why_ , he agreed.  He said he wouldn’t get into trouble for it, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter.”

Nick took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. He’d made the right decision and he knew it; he had no regrets about what he and Kelly had done.

“So he wrote me a prescription for something, told me to mix it with Gatorade, and then Kelly and I wrapped everything up.  I found a place we could actually get to that was out under the sky, and we lay under the stars getting high like we used to sometimes in the service.”

“It was perfect,” Kelly interrupted.  “I wasn’t going to live too much longer, and this way I was able to go without worrying about what would happen to Nick.  I couldn’t ask for any more.”

There was silence from the other side of the island, and Nick could practically hear the gears turning as they all worked their way through it.  Nick was still nervous, waiting for them to call him on taking the coward’s way out.

Finally Zane spoke up.  “Huh.  Makes sense when you put it like that.” 

He turned back around to look at Ty, to see what the other man was thinking.  Ty looked at him for a few long seconds, then shrugged.

“Really it ain’t much different from what I did,” he admitted.  “I coulda got my heart fixed, but I didn’t really want to.”

Nick relaxed, grateful his friend was able to understand his reasoning. 

Eli snorted.  “I guess suicide being a sin is something else the church got wrong then, right Papi?”

Nick gave a weak chuckle. “Yeah, looks like.” 

“Wait, how did I not think of this before?” Ty cried in outrage. “I never saw Saint Peter.  Wasn’t he supposed to greet us at the Pearly Gates and tell us if we got in or some shit?”

Ty looked at the other men accusingly, “Did you all meet him and I didn’t?”

Everyone tried to hold back their laughter until Nick finally snorted and Eli broke with a full body laugh.  The entire group laughed loudly while Ty sat in silence, his indignant expression at odds with the smile he was trying to hide.

“I think that was more fanon Jesus, Ty,” Nick choked out when he could breathe again.  “There’s a lot of shit that’s just plain wrong.”

“Fine,” Ty said with a grin.  “I’m fine if that’s all bullshit, but if you fuckers got greeted at the Pearly Gates, and I got hustled in the back door, I’ll be pissed.”

“Well, you’ll be happy to know I wasn’t greeted by anyone,” Nick said.  “I woke up right where I’d fallen asleep, and the only difference was nothing hurt.”

The rest of them shared how they’d woken up, all of them where they’d died, and all of them almost immediately greeted by someone they’d loved.  Eli’s grandfather had knocked on the hotel door, Harrison was waiting for Zane in the bookstore under their apartment, and Zane had been in the living room on the couch reading when Ty woke up.

Nick found it a little odd that Kelly’s parents hadn’t been there for him, but figured it made sense he was greeted by Eli. There was no love lost between him and his parents, and his sisters were all still living, so Nick didn’t really have anyone other than his team he really loved anyway.

As he thought that he realized Owen and Digger were probably around somewhere too and asked about them.

“I let them know y’all were here before I closed up the shop,” Zane said.  “They should be coming around in a little bit.”

“C’mon,” Ty called hopping down of the bar stool.  “We can go down and wait for them, you gotta see what Digger’s got.”

Nick chuckled at Ty’s enthusiasm and hung back with Zane as the rest of the group headed for the steps down to the front door.  As the others tromped down the stairs, Nick wrapped Zane up in a giant bear hug.

“I missed you man,” he said.  Then he remembered how broken up Ty was when Zane had passed and pulled away to look Zane in the face.  “Hey, when you died, we tried to keep Ty…”

Zane held up his hand to stop Nick’s apology, clapped him on the shoulder, and steered him towards the steps.  “He told me.  Thanks for being there for him.”

“Sorry I couldn’t do more,” Nick said, voice thick.

Zane smiled and gestured at his husband herding everyone out the front door, talking animatedly with Kelly and Eli.  “He’s happy and we’re together.  All of us.  That’s all that really matters.”

Nick nodded and the two of them followed the rest of the group down to the front stoop.  Kelly and the others were at the other end of the building, looking at something Ty had pointed out in the bookstore’s front window when Nick heard the exhaust of a large vehicle approaching quickly.  He looked up to see a huge black pickup truck come barreling down the street, with oversized tires and darkly tinted windows headed right for them.  He panicked and reached for a sidearm he hadn’t carried in over 40 years, trying to shove Zane back out of the way, even as Kelly did something similar.

Zane put his hand on Nick’s arm and gently stopped him.  “It’s ok Nick,” he said quietly.  “I keep forgetting you’re still new,” he continued. “Look.”

He pointed to the truck which was stopped beside Kelly’s Jeep, and had expelled Owen, who pretended to puke at the front of the truck, while Digger climbed out of the driver’s seat, laughing raucously. As Nick watched, the five men hugged each other tightly, and Nick could see tears glistening in Kelly’s eyes.

Zane put his hands firmly on Nick’s shoulders, and turned the man to face him. 

“There’s nothing going to hurt you here, Nick.  Nothing.  Ever.” Zane paused to let his words sink in.  “I know it goes against all of your training, and everything that’s ever happened to you, but there’s nothing here but the things you want.  You can’t fuck it up, or make it bad, or punish yourself, this place won’t let you,” Zane said quietly.  “You’re done fighting Nick, I promise.”

Nick felt himself relaxing, trusting Zane to be telling him the truth in a way he couldn’t when Ty said not to worry about it. He loved and trusted Ty, but he also knew the man. Nick knew Zane on the other hand, would analyze everything six ways from Sunday before passing judgement on it, and as a result he trusted Zane in a different way then he trusted Ty.

So maybe for the first time in his entire existence, he wouldn’t have to fight, or be afraid of anything.  He could just enjoy being with the people he loved, doing the things he loved with them and not having to hold his breath waiting for something to happen that would take it all away. 

Nick could live with that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All due to my peeps on the Cut & Run Discord server

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry, there's more. I love my boys to much to leave them like this.
> 
> This is the fault of the [Cut & Run discord server](https://discord.gg/bNSMkvt), the bible quote line was specifically Jena's fault.  
> They have a Subaru because I have a Subaru and and aunt with severe arthritis in her hips and knees and she says my car is the most comfortable to get in and out of because its not low like a normal car, nor high like an SUV or truck. Kelly was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer, which is extremely fast moving and has a low survival rate.  
> The cane chair thing is [this](https://ke.jumia.is/_1OKzGIA73fyesDMjVfqVzz-_Lo=/fit-in/680x680/filters:fill\(white\):sharpen\(1,0,false\):quality\(100\)/product/59/38989/1.jpg?6602).  
> I hope I've got the constellation lore correct, its what Google told me was the story, but if its not, send me a message over on my [Tumblr](https://brainfuzz.tumblr.com/) and I'll fix it


End file.
